Her Day Book
by Ridley Silverlake
Summary: She could have a shoebox of photographs, or a collection of postcards. Today, She's writing down a hundred things that make her smile. So she just might be the girl in the photos, and the one sending out the cards.
1. Surprise!

She could have a shoebox of photographs, or a collection of postcards. Today, She's writing down a hundred things that make her smile. So she just might be the girl in the photos, and the one sending out the cards.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Gakuen Alice. [:

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><p><strong>Her Day Book<strong>

_There's nothing better than getting a call from your boss saying you get to have the day off._

_It's raining, and I don't feel like leaving the apartment. And I don't have to. Life is good._

_I woke up too early. Force of habit, I guess. Cooking banana pancakes. Yum! Thanks for the breakfast idea, Jack Johnson._

_What to do today?_

_Stay home. Not change out of my pajamas. Eat banana pancakes and not finish it. Watch cartoons. Frolic with my guitar. Take weird photos? Draw and color. Dance to Elvis. Listen to Westlife. Be inspired by John Lennon. Sing at the top of my voice while all my neighbors are at work. Feed Lucy. Play with Lucy. Eat cheese and crackers. Eat everything with Nutella on it. Watch a movie on TV and put it on mute so I can try to figure out what's happening. Eat my banana pancake leftovers. (Take a long bath.) Feed Lucy. Play with Lucy. Take a long bath. Daydream in the bathtub and hope I don't drown. Sing at the top of my voice when my neighbors come home from work. Spend the night with only candles and non electricity-using things. Stay up all night. Read a book. Drink coffee with lots of sugar. Order pizza at two in the morning. Give the delivery boy a slice of pizza and a huge tip. Eat pizza on the balcony. Sit outside with a blanket. Newspaper Blackout. Wait for the sun to rise. Go to sleep._

_Hope I get to do everything I just wrote down._

Mikan's phone rang just when she was about to put her pen down. She jumped off her bed and grabbed her cellphone from her desk.

She smiled the second she saw who her caller was. She waited a few seconds before answering, and finally clicked on the button with the little green phone.

"Hello," she said with a smile, not caring whether or not whoever was on the other line could tell.

"But it's raining!" She replied to the person's request.

"Fine," Mikan huffed, "where?"

Not so surprisingly, she received a whole load of requests from her caller.

"Right now?" Mikan asked, taken aback by the sudden demand.

"My passport?" Now this was getting weird.

"Oh, but I'm sort of low on cash right now," she frowned, not knowing herself if she was disappointed or glad she wouldn't be able to do what was asked of her.

"Are you serious?" Her jaw dropped.

It took a while before her caller answered, but when they did, Mikan smiled and said, "Okay then. May I know where I'm going, at least?"

"You're serious," she laughed.

"Fine, fine," she surrendered, "bye."

She threw her phone to her bed and ran to the bathroom to take a quick shower. Moments later, she was all ready. She ran to the kitchen and filled a bowl with the name Lucy printed on the side, with some dog food.

The second Mikan shut the cupboard close, a small Shih Tzu ran towards her.

"I thought I could stay home and play with you, Lucy, but I have to go somewhere for a while," Mikan ruffled her dog's dirty white fur, "I'll have to ask Koko to babysit you again." Mikan felt bad for having to leave her dog in the apartment for the second time that month; and she felt bad for having to ask her neighbor to take care of Lucy for her a lot.

Mikan took the notebook she was writing on earlier and scratched out a really long paragraph she'd written about her plans for the day, and below it she wrote, '_Things That Make Me Happy:_' and left it with just that. She threw it into her bag together with a few pens, some spare clothes, her phone, her wallet, and, strangely, her passport.

_1. Staying home in my pajamas  
>2. The sound of rain against the roof<br>3. Jack Johnson. His music just has this feel good thing to it.  
>4. The Beatles… because why the hell not?<br>5. Lucy. She never fails to make my day… except when she poops in all the wrong places.  
>6. Unexpected phone calls that don't give you bad news<br>7. Long, hot showers on cold days_

Right when Mikan was about to grab her umbrella, the noise outside seemed to die down. She looked out the window to see if the rain had really stopped.

_8. Rainbows :)_

She took her umbrella anyway, and stuffed it into her already crowded bag. She grabbed her keys and headed out of her apartment.

"Bye, Lucy! I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" She patted her dog on the head and left the apartment quickly before she could run after her.

Mikan didn't know what she was doing, or where she was going, but she knew it was going to be great. She didn't know how she knew, she just did.

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><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>Just something I came up with weeks ago while listening to Jack Johnson. Now I see how obvious it must be that this was inspired by his music.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a one shot… a really long one. But I decided to chop it up into a few more chapters. So here it is. Wait for the next chapter, meanwhile, you can treat yourself to nummy banana pancakes. Yum~

-Ridley Silverlake


	2. Postpone Nothingness

**Her Day Book**

On her way to the elevator, Mikan stopped at one of the doors farthest from hers, and put a sticky note on the door.

'_Koko, going out of town for a while. You know what to do.' _Before pressing the down button for the elevator, she walked back to the door and drew a small puppy's head on the note.

Mikan smiled to herself and turned to the elevator. Before even getting the chance to reach for the down button, the elevator doors opened and revealed a red balloon tied to the silver railings inside, with a note attached to it.

She looked around and then, after seeing the absence of any other breathing creature, she entered the elevator and took the note tied to the balloon.

'_Good morning, sunshine. Flight isn't 'til 2PM. Go take a walk or something.'_

She recognized the handwriting at once. She smiled, tied the balloon to her wrist and put the note in between the pages of her notebook.

_9. Surprises  
>10. Balloons<br>11. Handwritten notes — they're just more meaningful than emails and printed ones, don't you think?_

She pressed _G_ on the elevator and waited for the quick ride to halt. The elevator made a high dinging sound and opened its doors to a small empty lobby.

Mikan stepped out of the elevator and made her way out of the building. On the other side of the glass doors, she could have sworn she saw a familiar man walk past really quickly. She ran to the door and pushed it gently, just enough to be able to stick her head out and look outside both ways. She saw no familiar face, except for the security guard standing to the left of the glass doors.

She shrugged it off and made her way to wherever her feet felt like taking her. She looked straight ahead and took in the moist morning air.

_12. Fresh morning air  
>13. The wind against my face<em>

Mikan continued walking and took sight of a small café in the corner of the street. Maybe that's where her feet felt like going.

She entered to find it almost empty, but the atmosphere was warm and welcoming as opposed to outside. She went straight to the counter where the barista nicely asked for her order.

_14. Being first in line  
>15. Friendly, happy baristas<em>

"A croissant and a hot chocolate, please," Mikan said, getting her ten dollar bill ready.

"Would you like some butter and jam for your croissant?" the barista asked.

"Just some butter would be great, thanks," Mikan replied. She paid for it, took her change and her receipt and went on to look for a seat. Despite how early it was, she found the place almost full, with only the lonely wooden tables and chairs in the center, which she hated sitting on; so she went back outside and took a seat on one of the cushioned metal chairs under an umbrella.

_16. The warm morning breeze.  
>17. When the sun comes out from behind the clouds after the rain.<em>

She took a newspaper from the magazine rack beside her table and flipped to the comics immediately.

_18. Comics. _Peanuts_, to be more specific._

While she found herself laughing at Snoopy's mental sarcasm towards Charlie and Sally Brown, a waiter came out through the glass doors and placed her cup of hot chocolate and her croissant (with a pack of butter sitting on the side of the plate) across the table, away from the newspaper, trying not to disturb Mikan from her solitary giggling. He smiled at her and took the empty tray back inside.

_19. Laughing alone in public and not having people judge you.  
>20. Friendly waiterswaitresses._

Mikan folded the newspaper and put it back where she'd taken it earlier. She took a sip from her hot chocolate, hoping it wasn't too hot to burn her tongue.

"Ow!" Mikan made a face. "Of _course_ it was hot. What were you thinking?" She said to herself and rolled her eyes, and bitterly chuckled at her own stupidity. But deep inside, she was actually secretly thankful she hadn't spit her drink out.

She wiped the small tears from her eyes that the sudden heat had forced out of her, and turned to devour her croissant instead. Right when she took the butter knife, her phone beeped and vibrated. After successfully rummaging through her bag to find it, she slid her finger across the screen to see who or what had intruded on her trying to consume the beautiful, warm croissant.

"Oh," she set her knife down on the plate slowly after seeing whom the message was from.

'_Flight is postponed to 11:30. Find something to eat up some time. I'll see you later.'_

"Great," Mikan threw her phone back into her bag and pushed herself back to the chair's backrest. She took her phone again to check the time and threw it into her bag once more. "What on Earth am I supposed to do for two hours?" She pouted.

Mikan sat up again and decided to finally eat her croissant.

Minutes after she'd finished, she remembered about the hot chocolate she'd temporarily disregarded earlier. She drank it slowly—this time, without burning her tongue—hoping every sip she took would speed up time and that by the time the cup was empty, two and a half hours would have passed, with just enough time for her to get to the airport to go to some place she didn't even know. But alas, every sip only took a few small seconds, and when she'd finished—with a few quick glances to her phone and frequent peeps into the café's window in between short sips—only half an hour had passed.

_21. Hot drinks with the perfect temperature._

She gave a heavy sigh. '_What to do for another two hours?_'

She looked around and glanced at every other person sitting outside the café with her, longing for sudden, miraculous ideas that would get her out of two hours of absolute nothingness. Disappointed that the best thing she laid eyes on was a baby who found it in her clueless heart to smile back at her, she leaned back on her chair, hopeless.

_22. Mutual smiling with a stranger's baby (as creepy as that may sound)_

Then Mikan looked beyond her fellow café early birds. She saw the city's tall buildings, businessmen rushing to work, buses and cars moving as fast as the speed limit permitted them to. She looked further and saw children hopping out of their school bus to get to school. Even further than that, she saw a distant park with its grass and swings damp with morning dew. And even more distant, she saw the ocean.

And then she knew _exactly_ what she wanted to do for the next two hours.

**To be continued…**

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><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>Finally came around to updating this. Well, it's May Madness, so I had to get these fingers typing to make up for my zero activity for last year's madness for the month of May. [:

You might want to give a review. It lives up to one of the things on _my_ list of things that make me happy. [;

_Ridley Silverlake  
><em>


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